Judge orders VA to provide benefits to veterans in same-sex marriages

posted at 8:41 am on August 30, 2013 by Jazz Shaw

The Department of Veterans Affairs can no longer rely on its unique reading of federal law to refuse to provide full benefits to a California veteran in a same-sex marriage, a federal judge declared in a ruling filed late Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall of Los Angeles sided with Tracey Cooper-Harris of Pasadena, Calif., a 12-year Army veteran, who sued the VA for denying her full disability benefits because she is married to a woman.

The VA is the defendant in several lawsuits over its assertion that the Supreme Court’s decision in June striking down the Defense of Marriage Act didn’t apply to it.

The “unique reading of federal laws” in question here seems to boil down to the labyrinth of government regulations underlying top level decisions, not all of which are immediately updated when some huge redefinition takes place. Title 38 of the federal code deals with benefits to veterans, spouses, dependents, etc and has long included the definition of “spouse” as being a “person of the opposite sex.” Even though the decision in Windsor v US ran directly afoul of that, the regulations were still on the books and the VA was basing their rulings on them.

Rather than some sort of ideological battle between politically motivated combatants, it looks as if this was just a case of the military community doing what they always do… follow the regulations. This idea is supported by a previous comment on the subject by the department’s Secretary, Eric Shinseki.

“Should the … spousal definitions be revised or determined to be unconstitutional, VA will be prepared to update its policies and systems in a timely manner,” Shinseki wrote Aug. 14.

The judge was apparently not going to be content to wait around for the regulations to be rewritten, and has ordered the VA to take action – at least in this one case – immediately. Don’t be surprised, however, if that regulation gets updated pretty quickly now that this story has hit the press.

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I just had to sit through “Sexual Assault Prevention” training. While it was mostly skewed in the normal way (women are always the helpless victims and males are always creepy perverts), there was one scenerio that was deliberately ambiguous. We were told that the victim and assailant could be male-female or same sex and asked how that would make a difference.

Welcome to the new America. Obama’s America. God how I hate that filthy lazy thin-skinned bastard.

The minute my denomination caves on this issue is the minute I leave organized religion. My relationship with God isn’t predicated on sodomites feeling good about their relationship and forcing me to accept it as normal.

Marriage= One man and One woman. No matter what the law says. If we embrace sodomy as a normal relationship, I see no reason why two indiviuduals who live together can’t get the same benefit of the law. For that matter who the hell are you to penalize a man for the love he has for his goat?

I’m being deliberately comabative because it is Friday and you’re an effing moron.

In the majority of states in the union, the state constitution forbids recognizing same-sex marriage.

And the federal government is acting like it’s been universally accepted. In effect, the federal government is already requiring same-sex marriages be recognized at the federal level. In the military right now, two men or two women are authorized to take up to 10 days leave to go travel to a state that allows same-sex marriage and get “married.”

It is clear more and more every day that everyone who pretended this was about equality was lying or deluded. Regardless of the fact that there is absolutely no federal statute establishing same-sex marriage, it’s being treated as settled.

This confirms what I’ve been saying all along. The push for same-sex marriage was always about being able to use government force against those who reject the idea.

It looks to me as if Obama’s re-election signaled the not so obvious evil left to come completely out of the closet; the complicit GOP game with amnesty, not defunding Obamacare,judges making morally corrupt law, open blasphemy with politicians no longer afraid and praying for the slaughter of God’s precious innocents in the heartland, Obama’s moving against the constitution taking guns without fearing impeachment, McCain no longer pretending to be conservative, Notre Dame funding illegals without fear of the friendly USCCB etc., etc.

For that matter who the hell are you to penalize a man for the love he has for his goat?
Happy Nomad on August 30, 2013 at 9:25 AM

Congrats for seeing the undeniable similarity between two rational sapient beings and a lower animal unable to consent or reason. Where would we be without people like you willing to reduce the human to the animal and claiming to see no natural or moral distinction between the two.

Where would we be without people like you, who can’t see the difference between proper and perverted, nor a moral distinction between the two? (Nor the difference between a period and a question mark.)